0. 2 Description 3 Credits

In case you are curious about that Random 110% DNWS, that means that Sauromancers have a 100% chance for +1 to either death, nature, water, or astral magic as well as an extra 10% chance for yet another +1 to one of those paths. Sauromancers are the power behind C¿tis. No nation in the Early Age can match C¿tis¿s skill in death magic. Yes, Helheim can recruit level three death mages, but those cost twice as much as Sauromancers and are capital only. While Sauromancers are cheaper and available everywhere, most nations most powerful mages have three levels in one path, two in another, and have that 110% random thing going on. Sauromancers are not quite that powerful. Their focus is clearly on death magic. Two nice things about EA C¿tis¿s Sauromancers is that they have 100% resistance to poison and have 10 protection. A common use for Sauromancers is to use them as skelly spammers on the battlefield, which is a good way to wear an army down. A Sauromancer who gets an astral random is vulnerable to Magic Duel, but when used in conjunction with Shamans as Communion Slaves, he can become a very powerful death mage on the battlefield. A level 4 death Sauromancer with a Skull Staff can summon up a large number of Ghosts each turn. A level 4 death Sauromancer, or level 5 if you get really lucky, with a Skull Staff can summon up 26 and 29 Longdead Horsemen each turn, respectively. About 25% of your Sauromancers can summon up Bane Lords, who, with the right equipment, make great thugs. A level 4 death Sauromancer with a Skull Staff can cast Manifestation, a fantastic remote assassination spell. C¿tis can easily spam Manifestation. Ghost Riders will not take enemy provinces for you but has a good chance of knocking out whatever is located in the province. Ghost Riders is only castable by a rare level 5 Sauromancer with a Skull Staff unless you throw in a Skullface too. I can not overestimate how important Tartarian Gate is for C¿tis. Tartarians are wonderful for magic diversification. It is wise to set up a strategy to either get the Chalice or cast Gift of Health. These two things will allow all the Tartarians you summon to be top notch. Know that you will need to cast Gift of Reason on most of them, but that is done easily enough by a Couatl with a Moonvine Bracelet. A Sauromancer given the right equipment can summon your national SC killer, the Devourer of Souls. Have your rare Sauromancers cast Twiceborn on themselves so you won¿t lose them if they die in friendly dominion. Another important thing to do is to cast Well of Misery. C¿tis¿s hunger for death gems is insatiable. Wither Bones will force any opponent to think twice about using undead against you.

The first of two capital only commanders for EA C¿tis, the Lizard King is the most powerful priest at your disposal. If you are pursuing a bless strategy, Lizard Kings are invaluable. They can cast Divine Blessing, which will bless all of your sacred units on the battlefield. They can lead a whopping 120 units! Lizard Kings also have good stats for a priest, but at 280 gold and 5 resources, protect them well.

The very last recruitable commander C¿tis has is capital only, not that you are going to need a lot of these. They have about two uses. First, Lizard Heirs can lead map movement three units. Second, they make good thugs. If you have a water nine bless, they will mow down many units in one round. Of course fatigue is a problem in such instances.

Paying ten astral pearls for a nation that doesn¿t have an initial astral pearl income is not cheap. It is too bad too, because Sirrushes are quite nice. With high attack skill and strength and three weapons, these guys are great on the attack. They have crappy defense skill but having a lot of hit points and good protection helps to even things out. With a water nine bless, Sirrushes can be brutal. Most of the time you will have better things to do with your astral pearls, but if you have a good bless, consider making use of them.

You will get three Monster Toads with each casting of this spell. Monster Toads should never be used against anything size five or larger. They are simply not good in melee. They are good at spreading poison however, and their horrible attack skill doesn¿t come into account when trampling. Monster Toads¿ two main problems are low protection and terrible defense skill. These two things result in Toads dying quickly. A water nine bless is great for them. Other blesses that are also good are nature and air. No matter how powerful an astral bless you take, Monster Toads will always be vulnerable to spells like Soul Slay. Unless you plan on using lots of poison on the battlefield, don¿t even bother with Monster Toads.

Couatls will be your heavy lifters in nature and astral magic. They can fill a variety of roles, such as forging Moonvine Bracelets and casting Gift of Reason on Tartarians. Couatls can reach insane magic levels if in a Communion with Shamans. Couatls can also cast Acashic Record. It is an expensive spell, but it will give you the gems of other magic paths that C¿tis has such a hard time getting.

EA C¿tis will have a heck of a time summoning up Scorpion Men, but if you have extra earth gems lying around and a mage to summon them, conjure some up. Scorpion Men are all around good units. They have a plague bow and a gaze of fear for ranged weapons, and in melee they have a pincer, a stinger, and an enchanted sword. None of their stats are bad, and Scorpion Men are resistant to both fire and poison. Astral, air, and death blessings are the least useful for them, but, honestly, any bless they have will simply be a boon on an already capable unit.

The Devourer of Souls has mainly one objective, and that is to kill SCs. While it has a good attack skill, one must take into account that SCs take things to the extremes, and SCs will often have very high defense skill. Luckily, all it takes to kill a SC is just one hit. The attack is also not resistible by any means. Sending the Devourer solo against a SC is a quick way to lose the Devourer. Instead, send him in with backup in the form of mages. Spells like Tangle Vines and Bonds of Fire are good for making the SC a sitting duck for the Devourer. Once again, a water nine bless is an excellent choice, as is a fire bless. Know that the Devourer of Souls is a unique summon, just like the Elemental Royalty.

Skelly Spam: A tactic you can always fall back on for EA C¿tis, having your Sauromancers or Reborn cast Raise Skeletons turn after turn will result in a swarm of Longdead on the battlefield. While Skelly Spamming will not result in lots of dead enemies, it will wear done most opponents¿ armies. Later on, possibly with a Communioned Couatl, you can cast Relief to reduce the downtime for your mages when they get too fatigued.

EA C¿tis is strong in death magic but is severely lacking in other paths. Couatls are castable by your Shamans and can cover nature and astral magic. A Sauromancer with the right equipment can summon a Faery Queen to cover air magic, though you will have to empower her or forge a Tome of High Power to forge air boosters. Spectres can cover earth magic, though they will be weak, and help with water magic (a Spectre that get two water can use a Water Bracelet and Robe of the Sea to cast Streams from Hades). Lamia Queens are expensive but can cover blood magic. By far the best way to expand your magical diversity is to summon Tartarians. By the time you can summon Tartarians, hopefully you will have a lucky level five death mage. Give him a Skull Staff and a Skullface so he can start summoning them up. Try to get the Chalice or cast Gift of Health, otherwise, only a small portion on them will be able to cast spells.

8.16.1.2 Comments

Lammashstas--yes, they do attack your own forces, particularly if you have some ahead of your mage, like an archer decoy. I think they must do an "attack closest" order.

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OK, first off, I have never had as much trouble with Lammashtas as most people on this board apparently have had. There is a chance they will backfire and attack your own forces, but, in my experience, they seem to attack the enemy much more often.
Saurolich: I like him. Giving him some earth, fire, and air makes him a hard hitting SC early on, and later on he can make use of those summons, items, etc. that you have a difficult time getting access to. The fact that he is immortal also makes it so you can use him a bit more liberally than you would others. Putting all that magic on him can be quite expensive though.
Prince of Death: The PoD is rarely a bad choice. If you are not sure what to go with, a PoD is a safe bet.
Mother of Monsters: I have never used her, but after checking her out, I would say that her real advantage is being a titan-like pretender with rainbow mage-like easy access to other paths of magic. Mind you, she doesn't do either as good as the actual titans and rainbow mages. She is awfully expensive though with such weak starting magic, low dominion, and the obvious difficulty of using her in battle. I would say that there are better choices out there, but don't take what I say as the final word.
Mother of Serpents: I have only used her once and briefly at that. To me, her healing powers are primarily useful for healing herself if she gets hurt in combat. She is not as tough as other titans, but her stats are not bad. Those snakes she wields in combat are limited in power. They might be useful against the normal riffraff, but you should give her an item to take advantage of her great strength (which you probably already do). I have two main complaints about her. One, she is expensive. She has better dominion than MoM and better magic too, but it is more difficult to get access to other magic, which leads me to my second problem. She doesn't really offer EA C'tis anything that they don't already have. Death and nature are the two paths that your national mages best cover. With such difficultly in diversifying magic, a pretender with at least one path in another magic is preferred. You can put other magic on her, it is just going to be a bit expensive. If you want a pretender with multiple paths and be a powerful SC, the Saurolich is a better choice in my opinion.
Cyclops: Once again, we have an expensive titan. C'tis is not really in need of lots of earth magic. Some is good no doubt, but you can get that with other pretenders. Also, he has a penchant for losing that one eye of his.
Going with an order scale: I am not sure why you would need to change your magic strategy because of an order scale.
I am also not sure why you are constantly over taxing your provinces and patrolling them. I can only guess that it has to do with having little income without order, or maybe you are not expanding fast enough.
I don't believe taking a death scale affects where you start.

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I'm not generally over-taxing my provinces, but I was considering that because of my negative income modifier. I may have to go with order after all.
About changing my magic strategy? Well, to be honest, it wasn't really about going to an order scale, except on not spending as much on commander. It had more to do with being uncertain about my magic strategy.
So, you'd recommend diversifying magic away from my nation's strengths?
Now, oddly enough, I've built twenty militia and a taskmaster, and my income hasn't gone down one bit. In fact, 40 produces the same result. Does this mean that the 'cost / 15' is rounded down, or truncated? So, 10 and a taskmaster is oh, 100 gold down, no monthly payments. And why don't I see any upkeep for my taskmaster? Anyways, if I had a farmland i was willing to exploit, it could pay for itself fairly quickly.
I agree. The mother of monsters is far from a good choice, but she interests me - I may play her simply to see if I can use her without killing my own troops. Later, though, and only in singleplayer when I'm able to avoid dying regularly.
Other than giving myself one easy opponent whose always the same race, do you have any advice on any particular map settings that it will make it easier for me?
I certainly will refocus my fort building efforts and I'll take order three in my next game. Though I will miss seeing the random events. I am avoiding rainbow mages, though, simply because too much magic variety is a bad thing at this stage- simple data overload.
I think, since I'm living in Florida, and my state's recently been on fire, I should consider switching to Abyssia. I may not be serious, but its the ultimate roleplaying extreme! Yeah... I hear I can scan in a map of the state, if I just throw in some heat scales and fire magic, its true to life! No water mages allowed. We're conserving water, ya hear. Heh.

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Your income doesn't go down when you recruit troops, but your upkeep does increase. Every turn your treasury accumulates (income - upkeep).
I think it's been mentioned that stronger indies make for an easier game. IMHO this also applies to larger maps--crowded maps always result in AIs ganging up on me (because I'm weak in the beginning, having no bonuses to production like Impossible AIs get) before I'm ready. I like Glory of the Gods (multiplayer) with 6 or 7 AIs, tops.
I always take Order-3 Misfortune-3, mostly because I don't care about heroes and expand quickly enough not to notice the bad events (chance of events doesn't scale linearly with empire size). Sloth is often a good pick, depending on your race. The only times I've ever taken Death scales I've regretted it, although this may have something to do with my playstyle. Expensive blesses are a lot of fun but not generally as effective for me as good scales and terrific mages (I usually only play races with good recruitable-anywhere mages, like EA C'tis, LA Agartha, pre-3.08 Helheim, Arcoscephale, EA Ermor).